


The Chronicles of the Trollhunters' Parents (and Company) Mutual Worrying, Cooking, and Drama Club

by Noip13



Series: epilogues [1]
Category: Trollhunters (Cartoon)
Genre: Coping, F/M, Family Drama, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Parenthood, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 19:33:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14879858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noip13/pseuds/Noip13
Summary: In the wake of the troll migration to New Jersey, Barbara, her fellow Trollhunter parents, and so many others are learning to cope with a new normal.Thankfully, they've got each other.





	The Chronicles of the Trollhunters' Parents (and Company) Mutual Worrying, Cooking, and Drama Club

**Author's Note:**

> Who else needs some parental bonding and fluff to cope with season three? Expect heavy use of almost all the characters still in Arcadia (I love me my minor characters), more angst than you'd probably think, and small (this ain't a shipfic) amounts of all canon pairings.

Mr. Javier Nuñez and Mrs. Ophelia Nuñez had always thought they had their shit together. Mrs. Nuñez was a local politician, a member of the city council, competent, well-respected and possibly next in line for the mayor's office. Mr. Nuñez was an excellent homemaker and helped run a local food pantry in his spare time. They had two wonderful children: Claire, an intelligent, gifted young student and actress, and a wonderful older sister to adorable little Eñrique, their sweet, if mischevious, baby boy.

Then it turned out their baby was a fake and their real child was trapped in a dark dimension for months, their underage daughter's extracurriculars involved functioning as part of what they'd gathered to be the police force of an entire species of magical beings along with her (also underage) friends and her boyfriend, and said magical monsters had been hanging around their city all year and for who knows how far back with no one the wiser.

Also, their daughter's ex-history teacher was a "Changeling". That was...certainly interesting.

Needless to say, they had a lot of catching up to do. Toby Domzalski was helping them out as much as he could, but there was a lot of magical and monster strangeness in Arcadia for him to deal with, even after the trolls had headed east. As one of the very few people in their city with half a clue what was going on, he was a busy kid.

And that was another thing, too. Toby Domzalksi being the only human "Trollhunter" left in Arcadia.

Ophelia sighs at the tangle of spreadsheets on her laptop. She leans back into the pillows propping her up in her bed, taking a second to rest her tired eyes. The bedroom door opens with a thunk, and she lazily glances up. It's Javier, of course. Eñrique can't exactly walk yet, and Claire, well--

Javier's finishing up a conversation on the phone as he walks in "Okay, _corazoncito_. Good to hear, good to hear. I love you. Do you want to talk to your mother? Here she is, _te amo_ , goodbye."

Ophelia peels herself away from her computer and reaches out to take the phone. "Hi, sweetie."

"Hi, Mom," says her daughter. "How are things?"

"Oh, they're fine. Just dealing with all of this troll business, you know. Arcadia's been all over the news."

"Yeah," Claire sighs. "We're going to have to deal with it sooner or later. Blinky wants to get everything set up in New Jersey before we start talking to the government or anything, though."

The thought of her daughter being mixed up in a dialogue between the federal government and trolls is terrifying, but there's nothing Ophelia can do about it right now. They'd promised Claire at least a couple of months to help the trolls. Demanding she come home early would probably just make her want to stay with them even longer. Ophelia just, well, has to think of it like charity work. Blinky seems like a good...troll, and with their home gone, Lord knows he and his people need all the help they can get. And Claire is a smart girl. She has plenty of time to get out before talks with any governments begin.

Besides, Jim needs her too, the poor kid.

"Where are you?" she asks, instead of saying any of the things she wants to say.

"Somewhere in Texas," says Claire. "The gyre station we were using only went as far as Austin, so right now we're searching for another one. Blinky says there's definitely another one around here that might take us as far as South Carolina, but it hasn't been used in decades and they're having trouble finding it."

Ophelia tries not to think of her daughter using long-abandoned magical monster technology as transportation. _The trolls trust it to carry themselves, don't they?_ Except trolls seemed to be so much sturdier than humans...

Almost like she can sense her worry, Claire says, "I've been on one before, _Mamá_. It's fine. And we've got some gyre engineers here to fix it up if there are any issues."

"Oh," says Ophelia. "That's good, then."

Ophelia wants to say something meaningful. Something to tell her daughter how proud of her she is, how much she misses her, how much she hopes everything works out okay for her, for Jim, for Blinky, for all of the trolls. Something to communicate to her daughter how much she loves her. "Be safe," she says, and hates herself a little bit.

Ophelia can practically hear the eye-roll even from half a country away. "I love you, too."

"I love you. Talk soon?"

"I'll call tomorrow. Bye." Claire hangs up and Ophelia does, too, but she can't bring herself to go back to work. Instead, she stares at the contact photo on Javier's phone for Claire, a sweet shot of her smiling during last summer's trip to the beach. It feels like it's been forever since she saw her girl.

 _I should've made more time for her while she was still here,_ she thinks.

Javier had started getting ready for bed while she talked with Claire. From the bathroom, she hears him calls around his toothbrush, "I hate her being up so late, don't you?"

Ophelia sighs and puts down the phone. "Well, it's the time difference, too."

"Yeah," he says. "Still, they're nocturnal, right? I hope living with them doesn't mess up her sleep schedule too much."

He's right, of course. Javier usually is.  _Perfect, another thing to worry about. Add it to the list._

"C'mon," he says as he leaves the bathroom and slides into bed next to her. "You should go to bed. You've been working for hours."

"I know. It's just...there's so much to do. Insurance doesn't have a clue how to classify an 'Eternal Night' disaster, just to start."

He kisses her, softly. "Sleep. You work better when you're rested, you know that."

With a sigh, she closes her laptop. "What would I do without you?" she asks, and kisses him back.

He laughs. "Starve sitting at your desk, I thought we figured that out back in college."

"You fed Eñrique?"

"He's full. And asleep, like we should be." He switches off their bedside light, and the darkness swallows their room. And Ophelia thinks that's it, but into the blackness around them, her husband whispers, "I miss her, too."

Distantly, Ophelia finds herself thinking of Barbara, the mother of the other kid who’d decided to spend their summer vacation helping the trolls start a new life. Except Jim wouldn’t be returning to Arcadia anytime soon. Or to school. Barbara had said she had a lot of shifts at the hospital--no wonder, with the number of people injured during the battle--but the rest of the time she was alone at home, without a husband to comfort her or a baby to look after. Just knocking around that house by herself.

 _Maybe,_ Ophelia thinks with a pang _, I should give her a call her sometime._

* * *

Barbara isn't sure what she was expecting when she opens the door at nine at night, barely half an hour after having gotten home from her latest shift at the hospital, but whatever it was, it isn't this.

"Thelma?" Barbara asks. "It's, uh, nice to see you. Sorry, did we talk about meeting up? It's been crazy at the hospital, and--"

Thelma Domzalski blinks up at her from the front stoop, chicken casserole cradled in one arm pudgy arm and a plastic-wrapped plate of cookies in the other.

"Nope!" she says cheerfully. "Mind if I come in?"

Barbara forces a smile. "Of course."

Thelma walks in and heads straight to the kitchen, Barbara trailing uncertainly behind her.

"Thelma," Barbara starts, but she's interrupted by Thelma heaving the casserole dish and plate onto the counter with a clatter.

Barbara tries again, "Thelma, I really appreciate this, but you don't have to--"

"I remember," Thelma cuts her off, "That sentence. Do you?"

Barbara sighs. "Thelma, you're wonderful, but I can--"

"It was almost ten years ago now, I think," Thelma says. "You had just started at the hospital and had to work absolutely endless hours. Your supervisor had no empathy for single mothers, that awful man." She stands on her tip-toes and moves along the row of cabinets, rummaging through them one by one until she finds where they keep the bowls. "And Jim would spend the afternoons with me."

Barbara watches Thelma scoop two spoonfuls of still-warm casserole--she must have just heated it before leaving her house--into two bowls. "Yes, I remember." She'd hoped after graduating, she'd be able to spend less time at home studying and more time with Jim. Instead, she'd found herself lucky if she managed to catch an hour with him before bed.

Thelma continues, "And the first time I made dinner for the two of you, you might remember, you said that same thing. That I don't 'have to'." She clatters around a little more as she speaks, eventually emerging from a drawer with two forks and two napkins, and from the fridge with two beers. "Come on, Barb."

Barbara lets Thelma pull her over to the living room couch, and stares at an empty spot on the wall as Thelma busies herself with laying out her cooking. Barbara had never considered it to be a particularly significant living room or a particularly special couch. It was just part of her home, same as the kitchen or her bed. Looking around it now, though, she can’t help but remember how her kid and his friends finally told the truth in this room...or that they’d killed about fifty goblins in here.

And the couch she’s sitting on? This was the couch her son she'd laid her boy on when a strangely familiar tall blue troll in her son's armor had stumbled through the front door and fainted, what was it, a week ago, and she'd been left to wonder if her son was sick, if he was dying, if this was really _Jim_ because how  _could it be, what had that damn wizard done to her--_

Barbara reaches for her fork without thinking, then stops herself. Thelma sighs. "Barbara, it's okay. It's really okay. When I lost my son--"

Barbara looks up, face pale, and Thelma stops her protests with a raised hand. "I know it's different, in so many ways. I know. But...the change hits you out of nowhere. One minute you think you'll have him forever. The next thing you know..."

She sighs, and to Barbara's horror, she sees that Thelma is tearing up. Something wet races across her own cheek, and Barbara realizes she's crying, too, in that way she's always hated. Absolutely helpless to stop.

"Eat," Thelma says. "There are cookies for dessert."

Slowly, Barbara makes herself take a bite. It's delicious, unfortunately, and she groans in appreciation. She didn't have time for much of a lunch at the hospital, and she and Thelma eat quickly, the scrapes of their forks against their bowls the only sound in the house. She uses her napkin to wipe at her cheeks as she eats, and soon she's a little more put together.

When Barbara finishes her first portion, Thelma goes to get her seconds. Barbara thinks of protesting, but her legs are tired and she's spent the entire day rushing around, taking care of other people. In the end, she decides to eat a cookie and crack her beer. By the time Thelma returns, she's feeling considerably more relaxed and slightly buzzed.

"You know, Thelma," Barbara says as she starts again on the casserole, "This is delicious. Jim's been the cook of the house for years, I could always burn water."

Thelma laughs. "Well, he certainly has a gift. But it's never too late to learn." She quirks an eyebrow pointedly at Barbara.

Barbara takes another bite, but she's suddenly feeling a little less relaxed. Her gut twists. _Everything is changing, isn't it?_

Thelma tries again. "We could meet up once a week, perhaps?" she says. "I know your schedule is busy, but...well, Toby could come, too."

Barbara thinks of Toby. He's such a good kid. A good kid who has to deal with being left behind, too. She tries to imagine what it would be like to lose so many friends to the other side of the country back when she was sixteen years old, and she fails.

She tries to imagine three people sitting around her dining table. Instead of one. Instead of two.

"Okay," she says.

* * *

It's chaos, of course. Changelings lost their ability to turn human with no warning. All around the world, wherever his brother and sisters can be found, they are furious. They want answers. They want their lives back. They want a lot of things that no one is willing to give them.

Strickler's doing his best, anyway.

He and Barbara have had little time to speak, regretfully, but they still try to exchange a text or two every day. He opens his phone at the end of a long night to check his messages and is greeted by an unexpected sight--a message from one of his students. Or rather, ex-students. It's a selfie from young Toby Domzalski, who is grinning up at the camera in the middle of the Lake kitchen. An attractively flustered Barbara and an older woman Strickler recognizes as Toby's grandmother smile at the camera from behind a pot and a mess of ingredients.

The image comes with another text: "Doc L tought ud like to c her cooking class :)".

The spelling and grammar are atrocious, but Strickler can't help but smile. It was good to see Barbara functioning well and trying new things, instead of burying herself at the hospital or being alone at home. He really doesn't have the time to spare, but...

Strickler pulls up his log of texts with Barbara and begins to type. He wants to hear everything.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [njckle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/njckle/pseuds/njckle) for betaing!
> 
> Constructive criticism is always welcomed.
> 
> You can find more stuff written by me on [my tumblr](http://noip13.tumblr.com/).


End file.
